Whether Lady Morgan took this ill-meant advice or not, her style improved with each book, until in The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys it became simple and clear, with only an occasional tendency to high colouring and bombast.
Maria Edgeworth has described the customs and manners of Ireland, and unfolded the character of its people in a manner that has never been equalled. But Lady Morgan, far inferior as an artist, has given fuller and more picturesque descriptions of the landscape of the country, and has made a valuable addition to the books bearing on the history of Ireland.
CHAPTER VIII
Elizabeth Hamilton. Anna Porter. Jane Porter
Elizabeth Hamilton was also an Irish writer, but through her one novel she will always be associated with Scotland. In The Cottagers of Glenburnie she did for the Scotch people what Maria Edgeworth had done for the Irish, and represented for the first time in fiction the life of the common people. It is a story of poor people of the serving class. Mrs. Mason, who had been an upper servant in the family of a lord, has been pensioned and takes up her abode with a cousin in the village of Glenburnie. She was among the earliest of our settlement workers. This little village with the pretty name, situated in a beautiful country, had accumulated about its homes as much filth as the tenements of the poorest ward of a large city, and for the same reason, that its inhabitants did not understand the value of cleanliness. Its thatched cottages, had it not been for their chimneys and the smoke issuing from them, would have passed for stables or hog-sties, for there was a dunghill in front of every door.
Mrs. MacClarty's cottage, where Mrs. Mason was to live, was like all the rest. It was as dirty inside as out. Mrs. MacClarty picked up a cloth from the floor beside her husband's boots, with which to wipe her dishes, and made her cheese in a kettle which had not been washed since the chickens had eaten their last meal from it, although the remains of their feast still adhered to the sides. When Mrs. MacClarty put her black hands into the cheese to stir it, Mrs. Mason reminded her gently that she had not washed them:
"'Hoot,' returned the gudewife, 'my hands do weel eneugh. I canna be fash'd to clean them at ilka turn.'"
When Mrs. Mason proposed that the windows should be hung on hinges and supplied with iron hooks, so that they could be opened at pleasure, Mr. MacClarty objected to the plan: